Transcript for:
Exploring Etymology of Food Terms

Do vegetables actually exist? What's  so spicy about vanilla and avocados?   What time should dinner technically  be? We've assembled a hodgepodge of   snackable word origins on this  episode of Words Unravelled. Welcome to another Words Unravelled! I'm  Rob Watts from the YouTube channel RobWords,   and I'm Jess Zafarris, author of the etymology  books Words from Hell and Once Upon a Word.   Today on Words Unravelled, we have an edible  assortment of etymology facts for you. Yes,   we are in tasty territory with some  delicious, delectable food words. I think we should start with what they say  around here, at least, is the most important   meal of the day—the one that begins the day.  Can you tell us a little bit about breakfast? I certainly can. Breakfast is one of those words  where, if you just pronounce it differently,   it becomes immediately clear what it means. We  say it "breakfast," but it is "break fast" as   it's written, and that is simply what it means.  It's to break the fast of the night. You didn't   eat for a few hours whilst you were sleeping away,  but now you're up, and you're going to break that   fast. But it hasn't actually always only meant  the first meal of the day. Breakfast could refer   to any meal you've had where you haven't eaten  for a while. I think William Shakespeare uses it   in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Let me find  a quote—I've got it here somewhere. Yeah,   he says, "I would have been a break fast to the  beast." There's also a quote from John Dryden in   one of his poems who says, "The wolves will  get a break fast by my death." So basically,   if anyone's a bit starving and they get a morsel  to eat, they've broken their fast—they've had   breakfast. And if you're a hobbit, you  must have second breakfast, of course. Indeed! Actually, we should go into the various  different meals that, at one time at least, made   up an Englishman or woman's day because there were  so many of them. You could talk about breakfast,   lunch, elevenses, second breakfast if you like,  supper, afternoon tea, high tea. These are all   separate things. The amount of food that must have  been consumed on English country estates in the   past is extraordinary. My understanding is people  ate smaller meals throughout the day rather than   three, and of course, this depended on your class.  If you were of a higher level, like the leisure   class, you probably ate a little more throughout  the day than if you were working in the fields. Yes, little and often, I'd say. Little and  often. For example, elevenses was just a   little sort of snack that you would have at  around 11:00 in the morning while waiting   between your breakfast and your lunch. There was  also fourses, which I don't know exactly what they   used to have in England, but they still have  this in France. They call it quatre-heures,   and it's a little sweet snack that you  have at around 4:00 in the afternoon. Oh, very nice! I like that. That's cute,  isn't it? That's a great time to have a   snack—4:00 is perfect. That's exactly when I  always get hungry. I live with a French lady;   my wife is French, and whenever she has her  little nibble at 4:00 on a snack of some form,   I think, "Yeah, okay, I could have a  chocolate biscuit too. Let's do it." Tell me, do supper and dinner mean  the same thing where you're from? No, they do not. Oh, interesting! Tell me the difference,  because those words are interchangeable for me. Well, okay, so it depends on your class, like so  much in England. It depends also on whether you're   in the north of England or the south of England.  I don't know quite how it works in Scotland and   Wales. It's a bit different. But certainly in  England, you have to bring in tea as well as   dinner and supper. So where I'm from, we call  the latest meal of the day "tea," which isn't   insane because one of the old meals of the day  used to be high tea, which would be eaten around   6:00 or so. That is kind of your tea time, as  we call it. Dinner is considered a more proper   word for food at that time of the day, and in the  north, you can sometimes say your lunchtime meal   is your dinner. I know people, posh people, who  refer to their later meal of the day as supper.  Although when I was growing up, supper was  something you would have after your dinner,   a little bit later, just before you go  to bed to satiate yourself. But I have   to bring in something here—something very  interesting about the word "dinner." The   word "dinner," etymologically speaking, is  supposed to be the first meal of the day. Interesting! Yes, why is that? Well, here's an interesting thing. So breakfast  in French is "déjeuner," right? And in Spanish,   it is "desayuno." Both of these words  mean to break your fast as well,   right? So you've got the "dé" in "déjeuner" and  the "des" in the Spanish word "desayuno," meaning   the negative of "jeûner," which is to fast. But  they both come from the same root as the word   "dîner." They have the same Latin root. These two  words—the French are breaking their fast twice,   both with their "déjeuner" and their  "dîner," which is what they now call   their latest meal of the day. However,  "dinner" in both French and English has   been moving further and further back in  the day since the very earliest times   that the word was being used. It went from being  breakfast to being lunch to being a later meal. Well, I suppose we needed a distinction, right?  Since it's implying that as long as you're not   constantly eating throughout the day, every time  you take a break, you have to have a breakfast. Yeah, well, what it is is it came  to mean the first big meal of the   day. As that meaning came along, it  started to be pushed back by changes   in human behavior and societal behavior.  This meant that first, it got pushed to   around what we now call lunchtime. But  then, around the Industrial Revolution,   when it became less practical to have a big meal  either in the morning or during your lunch break,   it became the evening meal instead. So it's  just been getting further and further back. That would also, I imagine, correlate with  technology that allows more indoor lighting or   better indoor lighting for your average person.  You have the opportunity to have nighttime   meals where you're not sitting in the dark or  need extra candles or fire or whatever else. That's an excellent point. I hadn't even thought  of that, for sure. This reminds me—given the fact   that you've brought up a French-derived word  in contrast to a Germanic-derived word—we have   a lot of differences introduced by the class  dynamics of the Normans coming into Britain and   replacing words for meals, formerly words for  meals with French-derived words. For example,   we've got the Germanic terms for animals: pig,  cow, chicken. But then, once it's on the plate,   the ruling-class Norman plate, it becomes a  French-derived word like pork, beef, and poultry. Yeah, that's one of the linguists' favorites, that  one, because it's the best possible illustration   of the class dynamics between the Anglo-Saxons  and the Normans. When they arrived and when   William the Conqueror came over and replaced all  of the existing nobility with his French pals,   or his Norman pals, though they wouldn't  have called themselves French back then,   but the French-speaking pals anyway. Then we get  this huge flood of French words into English,   and it never really stops, does it? Of course, but we still have, because I  think it's one of the more fundamental   things that we experience as humans,  a lot of Germanic-derived food words,   especially for the basics like  bread and meat and such, right? Yeah, and you mentioned the word "meat." Meat has  undergone a transformation as a word, hasn't it? That's right. It was a word in  Old English for any type of food,   any type of nourishment. It could also  be animal food. Food itself means fuel   and nourishment as much as it does food.  Meat could also be a word for a meal,   and originally it's from a root meaning  moist or wet, which I don't super love. Everyone's always hating on the word moist.  That's called a word aversion, and about 20%   of people share the word aversion to the word  moist, apparently. I'm not one of them, but... I am. No, I quite like it. Oh, I said that in a slightly  creepy way, didn't I? In any case, meat became a word for flesh,  essentially, which was more the word that   you would hear in association with what  we would call meat today. In the 1300s,   interestingly, what we now call meat  was referred to as "flesh-meat." We   talked before about how a butcher was known as  a "flesh-monger," and that's much more in line   with the German and the Dutch words for meat,  which are basically just "flesh." But also,   vegetables were called "green meat," and  dairy products were called "white meat." I like that. That is so interesting. I like that.  It feels like a kenning, but it's not quite. Like a what? A kenning, like in the metaphorical Old English  terms that you find in Beowulf and such,   like calling the sea the "whale-road" or  calling your brain your "brain-locker." All right, I genuinely didn't know  there was a word for that. I like that. Isn't that neat? Basically, the words that we  have for food today, the most basic kinds of food,   including bread—that was also not quite the  word that we use today. It was a word for a   crumb or a morsel, but also bread in general.  The root there means to bubble or to boil,   referring to the rising of yeast. Yeast  also means to froth or bubble. But the more   common word for food, as in our daily bread, was  still, again, meat, which is kind of interesting. That is interesting. In any case, to make this more confusing, bread  occasionally is recorded as a word for meat,   as in the term "sweetbreads," which refers  to the pancreas of an animal used for food.   The bread element in "sweetbreads" might  not be related to the word bread. It might   instead be related to another very similar  Old English word meaning flesh. So we have   a lot of confusion between bread,  meat, and flesh all over the place. But bread does fold into a lot of English words,   like "company" and "companion," from the Latin  word for bread. That's someone you share bread   with. The same Latin root is in "panini" and  "empanada" and "pantry." There's another word   in English that also means someone you eat your  bread with, and that is "lord," because the Old   English was "loaf-ward." So yeah, someone  who looked after your bread. Meanwhile,   a lady was literally a "bread maid" or a  "bread maker," someone who kneads bread. "Kneads" with a K, or "needs"  like I need something? Not desires or requires, but in fact  massages. While we're on bread, something   that I found surprising while researching  this was the fact that "meal," so flour,   for example, what you might make  bread with, that word isn't actually   related to the word "meal" as in a repast,  a time of day when you eat a thing. Oh, that's neat. Is one of them from  "grind" and then the other one from "time"? Right, something along those lines. You got it. That's exactly what it is. Yeah, so the one that is flour, as you   might expect, is the one that is grind. So, meal  is directly related to the word "to mill," like,   you know, a windmill where you would actually  make the stuff, or a miller would make the stuff.   And then, yes, the meal time—so when we say "meal  time," we're actually being somewhat tautologist   because the word meal comes from a Germanic root  that does mean time. And actually, anyone who   speaks German will know that the word "Mal" means  time now. So, if you want to say "once" in German,   you say "einmal," "one time," "zweimal,"  "two times," or if you want something again,   you say "noch einmal," which means "another time."  And that's where our word "meal" comes from. I thought that was surprising that  they have converged in spelling,   as we sometimes see in English—blame the Vowel  Shift probably. They've converged in spelling,   they're in related fields, but  they're not actually related words. There's got to be some folk  etymology influence there,   I'm sure, where one impacts  the spelling of the other. Yeah, it's entirely likely. In fact, folk  etymology, I suspect, is going to come up quite   a lot while we talk about food words because this  "daily bread," these things that people have very   often, people do tend to influence how the names  for those things change, for better or worse. Speaking of meal times, we  haven't talked about lunch yet. Oh, we haven't, have we? Okay,   I can tell you about lunch. There's a  bit of a mystery about lunch, you know. Oh my goodness, we don't know which  came first, lunch or luncheon? It's always been assumed that luncheon  is a sort of extension of the word lunch   along the lines of punch and punching and  trunch and trunching, I think. Anyway,   the problem with that theory is that the  first citation has the word luncheon,   not the word lunch. So, that would suggest  that lunch is a shortening of luncheon. Oh, that's interesting. And  that's a relatively recent word,   right? Before that, we had "nuncheon,"  which meant like noon-draft or noon cup   of ale or whatever, or tea,  that came before luncheon. Yes, evidently. It's a Middle  English word, and I want to say   luncheon didn't show up until the 1600s. That's interesting, isn't it? So,   I would have guessed if you told me that  nuncheon was a word, I'd have gone, "Oh,   that's a brunch-style portmanteau of a noon  luncheon," but it actually comes first. It's really a noon drink even, yeah. And it's  probable that luncheon was modeled after nuncheon,   so technically speaking, luncheon should  just be drinking rather than eating. By the way, what does lunch supposedly mean? It means lump. A lump of food, right?  Lunch is to lump what hunch is to hump. Really? And bunch is to bump. Oh, I love this. I love this. It's good stuff, isn't it? I love those correlations. It's like true and  truth and grow and growth and dear and dearth. Mhm. Well, this leads me onto a really  good one then, a very, very relevant one,   one that we should have already covered by  now, and that is the word "food" itself. Ooh, the very theme of the episode. Indeed. So, food is to feed what blood  is to bleed and brood is to breed. So,   food is the means by which one gets fed. It's  obviously related to the word "fodder" as well,   and surprisingly, it's related to the word  "foster" as well, which originally meant to feed. I would not have guessed that one. No, you can sort of read foster as the word  food with a suffix on the end—that "-ster,"   which is like a, I think, a Middle English  suffix. It might be an Old English one,   not sure. Old words for food related to that  food, "noth" was an old word for your actual   food, which you can sort of read as being like  foodstuff. And also, there was an old term that   was "waybread," which I really like, which is a  term for food that you take with you on a journey. Ah, I was hearing that as "W-H-E-Y" and wondering  if it had anything to do with curds or cheese,   but I prefer "waybread." That's interesting. I  would like to take waybread with me on a hike. Well, one of my favorite words here in Germany,   they have the word "Wegbier," which means "way  beer," and it is the bottle of beer that you   take with you for the journey on your way to  go and drink some more beer somewhere else. Critically important. Very important word. We should talk about a few other food groups.  We've gotten into bread, we've gotten into meat,   but let's talk about fruit and vegetables  and whether vegetables exist at all. What do you mean? I mean, I wish they didn't, but they  do. There's a lot of discourse online   right now about whether vegetables exist  because there isn't a scientific standard   definition of a vegetable versus, like,  plants that we eat can be categorized as   fruits and berries, but there isn't a standard,  like, this thing is categorizable as a vegetable.   So, the whole tomato fruit versus veggie  debate is a little bit moot, though. A tomato is a berry, by the way. What? No, it's not. It totally is. What do you mean, a strawberry?  But a strawberry is not a berry. Yeah, that's because it's got  its seeds on the outside, right? I know that much. Hold on. Right. Okay, so  tomato, it goes in the salad,   but not a fruit salad. It is a vegetable,  but it's not. Everybody knows that. As a southerner, I would defy anyone  to say that something can't go into a   salad because I live in the same land  where Ambrosia is a food and a salad,   and it's made of coconut flakes  and marshmallows and canned fruit. Marshmallows in a salad? Yes. Ambrosia salad. Highly recommend  looking it up. It's horrible,   but I do remember liking it when I was a kid. Probably. It's named after the food of the gods. It is, indeed. The word "ambrosia" means  literally "immortal" or "that which is not dying." I didn't know that. Yeah, although an interesting  link to that definition.  Sorry, just as an aside, but you  know the French word for meat is   "viande," and that comes from the  Latin for "thing that is living." Ooh, interesting. See, that seems more specific  than the word that we have, which is very vague,   etymologically speaking. Anyway, the tricky part  about vegetables is that, etymologically speaking,   it's a little murky there too. You know,  in guessing games, you still hear "animal,   vegetable, or mineral," right? Those are the three  categories of things that can exist and be guessed   in the world. That's because the literal and first  recorded meaning of vegetable was originally an   adjective. That "able" ending is just like  "valuable" or "comfortable." But a vegetable   is something that is capable of life or growing,  and the Latin root "vegetari" means to animate   or to bring alive. So, vegetables and meat—we're  all on the same page in terms of something living. Does that make us all vegetables then? I mean, technically speaking,  well, okay, if we're animal,   vegetable, or mineral, I think we're  probably animal, but close enough. Yeah, but there's an argument to be  made that we're minerals as well, right? Oh, right, but by the most literal interpretation,  I think a thing that's capable of life is a   vegetable. So we are all technically vegetables.  We are veget-able. And we've talked about this   a little bit. Speaking of edible foods and  such, we've talked about the fact that apples   are basically the ultimate word for any kind of  fruit. The word "apple" was simply the word for   fruit back in the day, so it tends to turn up a  lot in the origins of other words. Like a date was   originally called a "finger apple," which  is also funny because the word "date" is   from the Greek "dactylos," also meaning  finger, which is very creepy and very fun. It's satisfying in its own way, yeah. Right, right. And then cucumbers  were earth apples. Chamomile comes   from a Greek word meaning earth apple  or an apple on the ground. I'm assuming   that chamomile and melon are calling upon  the same word meaning apple there, right? That's right. The word "peach" was  adapted via French from the Latin "malum   persicum," meaning Persian apple, which is neat. Oh, that's cool. And then a pomegranate literally  means an apple with many seeds,   from the Latin "pomum granatum."  It's related to the word "grenade." I think I only just found out that—I  should not boast about my own ignorance,   but I only just found out that  tangerine means fruit from Tangier. That is interesting, isn't it? Yeah, I think we covered that  briefly on the color episode. Did we mention it? We may have, we may not.  Maybe it ended up on the cutting room floor,   but I think we alluded to it at some point. Yeah, I'm sure we did, actually.  Another fruit with a bit of an   interesting backstory—avocado, very popular. Oh, it's a fruit, right? Ah, yeah, okay, just checking because the  lines have suddenly become very blurred. I   came into this knowing what a fruit and a  vegetable were, but now I suddenly don't. Avocado is the same word as the Spanish  for lawyer, as in advocate, and that is   just a nice bit of folk etymology. People heard  the Aztec word, which I cannot pronounce and   I'm not going to attempt to pronounce, and  couldn't make any more of it than I could,   and so they thought, "Well,  it sounds a bit like avocado,   so let's call them avocado." But that  Aztec word meant—what did it mean, Jess? It meant testicle. It meant testicle, yes. It meant that  fruit as well, but it also meant—also   funny classification-wise because  avocados are technically berries,   so it is metaphorically berries  and metaphorically looks like a   gentleman's berries. And that links it to the word  "orchid," which comes from the Greek for testicle. Right. I love that. Yeah. So, what I think is interesting about the  evolution of the word "avocado" is it's not quite   known whether the word simply became homophones  as a result of the difference between lawyer and   advocate and avocado—the adaptation—whether  it's folk etymology, just mishearing,   or whether it's an intentional snarky comparison  between lawyers and testicles that kind of stuck   around as a result of that. Another neat thing  here is that the Nahuatl word, the Aztec word,   which is pronounced similarly, and I'm going  to have trouble getting the consonants right,   but it's pronounced something like "ahuacatl,"  and the word "ahuacamolli" meant avocado soup,   avocado sauce, and that's where we get the word  guacamole. But it's all from the same word. So,   avocado and guacamole are from the very  same Aztec word, which is very cool. That is very cool. So, you feel like you're  saying two completely different words,   they have almost no shared letters it seems,  and then they come from exactly the same place. By the way, more folk etymology relating to the  avocado—sometimes it gets called the alligator   pear, which again is just folk etymology, people  not being able to really handle the original word,   thinking, "Well, it sounds a bit like  alligator," and then people kind of pick   up that ball and run with it. Pick up the  ball and run with it, is that the phrase? Yes, I think that is. Then people pick up that ball, or that testicle,   and run with it because, you know, it  can be green and kind of rough like an— Yeah, it's like scaly. I think that one  makes a lot of sense. It does look like   an alligator, a pear with alligator skin. It's also been called a butter fruit before,   which I think is neat because, you know, it's  got that nice buttery inside. A similar word that   went through kind of a funny naming twist is the  pineapple, which is also related to the pine cone,   which is super interesting. English is one of  the only Indo-European languages that doesn't   use a variation of the word "ananas"  to mean pineapple. In Middle English,   the word pineapple was a word for a pine  cone because it looks like an apple on the   tree. That makes a lot more sense, really, than  pineapple necessarily, but the connection here is   when a pineapple grows, it looked to European  eyes like a pine cone growing on its plant. So,   yeah, it is the fruit—the apple—the fruit  of the pine tree, so it's the pine apple. Interestingly, "ananas" is not related  to the word "banana." Bananas, rather,   are from an African language, probably Wolof,  spoken in Senegal and Gambia. Its origin and   exact meaning are unknown, but it's thought  to mean something like fingertip or finger. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that's kind of  obvious. When they're growing on the bunch,   they do look like a curled-up hand,  don't they? You would think they   would pick the ruder name for  that fruit, but they did not. I can give you another rude one, though,  if you like, if you're feeling aggrieved. I always want another rude one, you know. Vanilla is kind of... Oh, yes, this is one of my favorites! I love it. So, there's no way around it,  really. It means "little vagina." It does, it does, it does. It means—because a  vagina is also like a Latin euphemism for that   particular part. It's funny that we use that as a  very scientific and technical term, but it's just   another euphemism borrowed from another language  because it was a word for any kind of pod or any   sheath—anything that could hold another thing,  for obvious reasons. Then in Spanish, it became   "vainilla," like little pod, and then, yeah,  that's how it came back to English as vanilla. That's exactly it. I stole your  thunder on that one, I apologize. It's one of my favorite words. I knew it was going   to be right up your street. I would have  been amazed if you didn't already know it. You seek them here, you seek them there,  you find those genitals everywhere. Everywhere! Oh, excellent. All right,  let's see, why did I do a song? Let's do this the other way around: words  that have food implications in them,   even though we don't necessarily use them  to be related to food today. Like, the word   "precocious," for example, means developing or  literally precooked—like before your time. So,   a precocious child is precooked,  which I think is super interesting. Oh, it's like a variant on immaturity. Yes, exactly. It's cooked a little too  soon. There are also a whole bunch of words   that are related to random assortments  of things that originally came from food.   Like "hodgepodge" was originally a dish. It's  been part of English since the 14th century,   but the word has a bunch of variations.  There was hotchpot, hotch pot, and hog pot,   and it was basically any type of stew. I found  a couple of different recipes for them from   the 14th century. Sometimes it's made with goose,  spices, and wine; sometimes it's a bunch of other   things. Then there's "potpourri," which was  borrowed from French in the 1600s. Today,   it's any kind of medley or collection of things or  the smelly stuff in your grandma's bathroom. But   potpourri in French literally means "rotten  pot," which is so interesting. It probably   implies food that's been sitting in a stew for  a long time—not necessarily rotten, but having   the flavors melding together. It may also be a  misunderstanding of the Spanish "olla podrida,"   which is the Spanish national soup and also  interestingly means "rotten pot" literally for   a similar reason—it's cooked for a long time. One more of those interesting words for random   assortments, which is a nice addition to your  lexical treasure box if you have not come across   it before—and I've heard this pronounced two  different ways, so maybe I can be educated as   to which one is correct—is "gallimaufry" or  "galimafree," which is a word for a confused   jumble or medley of things. It comes from French  and was a word for a hash or a dish made of odds   and ends. It's a compound word composed of French  words meaning "to make merry" and "to eat a lot,"   so eating and making merry are all combined  in that one word, which I think is lovely. I've been sort of dabbling in a bit of Swedish,  and I came across the word "smörgås" the other   day—I'm definitely pronouncing it wrongly—but it  means sandwich. Then I realized, oh, "smörgåsbord"   means sandwich board! That's quite satisfying.  And, of course, I'm sure most of our listeners   know at this point the origin of the word  "sandwich" itself—from a particular person, right? Yes, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of  Sandwich, who was something of a bounder,   I think one could say. The story goes  that during a 24-hour gambling session,   he demanded to have food brought to him—meat  between two slices of, by the way, toasted bread. Ooh, now there, the revelation to me is  the fact that that bread was toasted,   because to me, that means what we're  calling a toasted sandwich should,   in fact, be a sandwich, and we should be calling  all the other sandwiches non-toasted sandwiches. Interesting. In the dialects that I speak,  there is no specification one way or another;   you just tell people whether you want it toasted. Ah, there you go. But, I mean, there's  no chance whatsoever that he was the   first person to do this, but yeah, this  story popularized it at least among some   people. Although I would say that the  idea that he was gambling during this   24-hour session is subject to some controversy.  There are relatives, potentially descendants,   who would say that he was not what everyone says  he is. Although it was said of him, "Seldom has   any man held so many offices and accomplished  so little," so I get the feeling he could have   been the type. Maybe he deserved it a little  bit. You can't libel someone who's dead, right? Let's see, should we talk through some interesting  dish and food word origins that we've come across? By all means. For example, I suppose since we  mentioned that avocado is from an Aztec language,   I think it's pretty interesting  that tomato is also from the same   language. Tomatoes weren't introduced to  Europe until after the age of conquest,   so to speak, and the word "tomato" in that  same language means "the swelling fruit." Right. Is chocolate as well  from the same language? I believe so, yes. And that was just  a drink, wasn't it—chocolate, I think? Yes, and then potatoes also weren't brought to  Europe until after European cultures started   the age of imperialism. Slightly before  that, "potato" is from the Haitian word   "batata," which meant sweet potato originally.  Originally, all potatoes were sweet potatoes,   and then later the white potato was cultivated.  Sweet potatoes, although they look like potatoes,   are not closely related. For several centuries,  sweet potatoes were called "common potatoes"   because they were more popular, while white  potatoes, which were considered lower quality,   were grown in North America and were called  "bastard potatoes" or "Virginia potatoes." Bastard potatoes are sweet  potatoes tubers as well, I believe. Yes, I think that's the distinction.  I had to look up what a tuber was. It's a bulbous growth below ground on a plant.  It's also fascinating how many words essentially   mean "salted." The word "pasta," for example,  means salted in Greek and Latin. "Pasta" was a   word for any type of dough, pastry, paste, or  porridge but was meant to imply a salted or   seasoned mass of food. "Pastrami" is from  the same root. "Salami" is from the Latin   word "sal," meaning salt, but also "salsa,"  "sauce," and "salad" are from the same root. And "sausage," I think, as well. I think so, yeah. All things that have been cured  or brined. Salad isn't necessarily brined now,   but it was originally a word for  brined vegetables, and then later   was extended to any mixture of vegetables. And this is the point where we mentioned   that Roman soldiers were supposedly paid  with salt, right? That's how they got their   salary. I don't know if that's one of those  things that's not actually a fact, though. Yeah, that one I’ve always  had a dash of suspicion for,   so I should look that up.  Someone will tell us, I'm sure. What other food words do you have on  your mind? What else is on the menu? Bacon, by the way. Bacon was also a more vague  term than it currently is. It comes from a   Germanic root meaning "back" or, if you want to  stretch the meaning, "ass." So, when we say back   bacon, which is the type of bacon that's preferred  in England—I've noticed you like streaky bacon in   the States, but in Britain, we like back bacon.  I think it's a bit more sort of meaty, a bit less   fatty. But that’s interesting in itself because  bacon actually comes from a word meaning "back,"   and the same root as the word "back," as  you would expect. It went through meaning   quite vaguely "pork," and then eventually it  narrowed down and became specifically bacon. The edible parts of a pig are very geographically  confused because the pork butt is also the   shoulder, and there are a bunch of other things.  So, the pork butt is the shoulder cut, I believe. Is this another of your depraved  American foods—pork butt? Oh, do you not have this word? I’ve never heard of it. I believe the implication is that it’s a big lump,   kind of like a butt is a cask. So, it’s a  large, heavy cut of meat that you cook. Like,   I cooked a pork butt on my smoker the  other day and turned it into carnitas. That actually sounds quite nice. Yeah, it was. I made half of it into carnitas  and the other half into Southern-style barbecue. Oh, I’m actually getting really hungry  now. How much longer have we got to do? Almost done. Let's see, a couple more to whet   your appetite before you go. Did you  know that calzone means trouser leg,   apparently because a folded calzone looks a  little bit like a folded pair of trousers? Or   that it’s rolled over for some reason? This  is debated, so that’s a maybe on that one. Yeah, while we're talking about Italian food,  lasagna supposedly originally comes from the Greek   word for chamber pot—a pot to do your business  in. It passed through Latin, and the Romans used   the word to mean a cooking pot. Lasagna is named  after the pot that it was originally cooked in. That makes sense. A lot of dishes are named  after the dishes in which they’re cooked,   like pot roast and things, and pot pies. Casserole is one. Casserole is a French actual dish—physical dish. Apparently, a bit of a mystery in terms  of why it’s called this is the word taco,   which comes from a word for wadding,  like you would put into a rifle. My   guess, and I haven’t seen this confirmed, is  that the wadding sense makes sense because   it implies something that’s light and fills up  your tube, I guess, so to speak. But in Spanish,   it wasn’t a word specifically for the folded taco  that we eat, but any kind of light lunch. That   happened to be a popular light lunch, and then it  was extended or made more specific for that dish. Well, have we sufficiently filled  our tubes? Have we satiated? Have we   done the etymology of food words? I think so. I think we're there. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jess. You  teach me so much during these podcasts. Likewise. We could go for hours on food, I’m  sure, so maybe we’ll do a part two of this   at another time or later this season.  Let us know what word origins and food   origins you know and which ones you want  to know about, and we will investigate. We look forward to it. I’m off for some supper. Actually, I think it’s almost lunch  around here, so let’s do it. Bon appétit!